It is known that the use of lighters by unintended users such as children may prove dangerous since, in handling a lighter, they risk igniting a flame and thereby injuring themselves or others, or even causing material damage to their surroundings.
This problem is increasingly taken into account by industrialists who manufacture lighters and, moreover, standards are in course of being drawn up in order to guarantee a certain level of safety of these products in relation to unintended users.
From the document U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,216, a lighter is known which proposes a safety mechanism in order to reduce the risks of lighting such a lighter by children.
The lighter is a friction wheel lighter provided with a pivotable cap which, in its so-called closed position, covers both the friction wheel as well as the region in which a flame is generated and in which a gas jet release nozzle is situated.
The pivoting of the cap by a user causes the friction wheel to rotate by the intermediary of a friction portion provided on the inner part of the cap and thus gives rise to the generation of a spark.
Furthermore, the effect of the pivoting of the cap is also to act on the gas jet release mechanism by means of a rocking lever.
A lighter is also known from the document U.S. Pat. No. 6,186,772, which is provided with a protective cap pivotable about an axis.
An actuator joined to the cap actuates both the gas jet release mechanism and the spark generation mechanism when the assembly formed by the cap and the actuator has pivoted about the aforementioned axis due to a force applied by the user.
That lighter is thus provided with a safety mechanism which prevents its use by children.
The safety mechanisms presented in the above documents are of relatively complicated design, which thereby renders their manufacture difficult.
Moreover, these mechanisms sometimes make it difficult to use these lighters by “authorized” users, such as adults.